Porridge

Some observations concerning the desirability of a new paradigm for medicine

We physicians have never had a clearly defined mission. That mattered less when expectations were lower and we could do less. Now though, the reigning paradigm is grounded in basic science, excessively confident, inpatient-centric, and broadly focused on treatment of symptoms and signs, on diagnosis and therapy. The development of a new medical paradigm seems…

ONE POEM – Lucy Holme

Unlike a jellyfish, she has a brain but doubts her instinct for survival.
swoop siren, dive under.

ART: ALL IS ONE – Camila Curiel

We are bound to nature, worms and dirt, we come from earth, and to earth we will return.

ONE POEM – David Linklater

The train leans through
the Highland line, Inverness
to Fearn, wheat either side.
This carriage bows for you.

TranSItion – Seigar

“Ignorance produces hate, knowing is the best way to tackle ignorance, and empathy is the only path to love.”

TWO POEMS – Al McClimens

‘She named the major constellations
while I gawked at them and reached out to touch.’

COMFORT FOODS // TWO POEMS – Daniele Nunziata

I’ve tried planting potatoes since you left,
but they never grow the way they did for you.

Failing to Eat a Local Delicacy – Michael O’Mahony

Lorighittas are a type of pasta made in one small village, Morgongiori, on a side of a mountain on the east of Sardinia. Only the women of this village, and only some of them, know how to make lorighittas. A lorighitta is effectively a woven pasta made from a dough of semolina and water. Each…

ONE POEM – Bronwen Wilson

I imagine turning into
a flamingo, likes the ones
on my onesie that I’m dying
to wear.

ARTWORK: Our Biggest Fears – Judit Pla Cano

‘I fear that I will never find relief’

ONE POEM – Cai Draper

i was scared to make this poem /
treat them right / they never
came close to meeting in life

COMFORT FOODS // Flour and Oil — Jacey de la Torre

Those are some peoples’ stories, some peoples’ histories, but they aren’t ours.

Disposable – Walker Thomas

“You can call me Mr. S,” my ninth-grade biology teacher told the class on our first day, “for the sssss a snake makes.” Eyes sunken behind wirerimmed glasses, he had a wide mouth with no lips that I recall, and long, stubble-blue cheeks like leather stretched tight to the bone. While he lectured, a red…

ONE POEM – Anna Seidel

We are looking for names,
that a laughing god
could call us by.

Ezra Pound: Prototypical Beat? – Michael Washburn

We today tend to remember Ezra Pound (1885-1972) for the immense density and erudition of his work. Pound’s many preoccupations included Confucius, medieval China, Bertrand de Born, the Provençal period, ancient Egypt, the beauty of the Farsi tongue, and his fellow early twentieth-century modernists. Of course, we also remember many unpleasant things about the man,…

ONE POEM – Iona May

When did writing
become such a warm meeting place?

Spiders in the Drain, and Other American Horrors – Brett Bezio

The wolf spider gestured to me from across the tub, unfurling four legs from behind the metal cover obscuring overflow drain to greet me, naked and alone in a foot of bath water. This memory stands in isolation, as remote memories of a young child often are. The memory itself creeps from a drain, simply…

COMFORT FOODS // Koláčky —Carolyn Janecek

I was born in the eye of a koláček––
my jelly center plucked from the trees
in my grandparents’ backyard

COMFORT FOODS // Courgette — Yas Necati

In the Turkish supermarket, you search through baby peaches and it makes me feel closer to you.

Diamonds or Snow – T.S.J. Harling

Image by Alex Avalos, via Unsplash This is the place you go to bury or burn the person you love. – You are in a cinema with friends, or a boyfriend, or your family. No-one is ill, no-one is cross, and you have enough money to waste on a cinema ticket and popcorn and fizzy…

An Ode to Cross-Dressing – Clara Schwarz

I tightly pull back my hair into a slick, low bun, parted far on the right side of my skull. With a several pumps of hairspray, I even out the edges and create a stiff look. I squeeze the top button through its hole and stand up straight as I clip the bow into its…

COMFORT FOODS // Cutlets – V.M. Braganza

Cutlets (also called potato chops), much like my family and their language, resist any attempt at tidy or singular classification.

Pero’s Promise – Tamara Lazaroff

At the village bus stand, with my packed bags, I’m crying my eyes out as I kiss the faces of the row of relatives—Uncle Mitko, Beti, Verka, Tanja, Mirka, even Baba Slobodanka who Branko has carried on his back. Others, too. They’ve all come to say goodbye before I go back home to Australia. And…

One Book: What Would You Save From Being Destroyed for Ever? – Hunter Liguore

If all the books in the world were being burned in a fire and you had the chance to save just one, what book would you save? For some this might be an easy answer; for others, this question might need the utmost consideration—as an avid book reader, with piles of books lining all corners…

COMFORT FOODS // My Mother’s Sweet Halwa — Sheena Hussain

The pots and pans of childhood stir me.

On Appearance: Disordered eating and the body, Kelsey Osgood’s ‘How to Disappear Completely’, and how language makes illness appear to us — Lizzie Hudson

An exploration of the impact of literature about eating disorders on readers. TW: Discussion of eating disorders and self harm.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Circus – David Rodríguez

“There’s a certain sort of artifice in my work and the way I use light and scenes because my lighting creates a kind of dreamscape.”

Email to Hannah – Catherine Madden

Today I woke up slightly ill and with a sense of nostalgia that was only just bearable.